Posts on ‘February 1st, 2010’

A federal judge ruled Thursday that only part of former staff attorney Yolanda Young’s race discrimination suit against Covington & Burling may move forward. Judge Reggie Walton wrote that Young had missed her window because she did not file a claim until 2008 against the firm’s non-promotion policy, which was implemented in 2006. But Walton allowed Young to go forward with her claim over the firm’s job-assignment policy, which Young alleges has a disparate impact on black staff attorneys.

In a big blow to White & Case’s London operations, the bulk of the firm’s U.K. banking practice is leaving for Latham & Watkins. The move will see four highly regarded banking and capital markets partners, including the co-head of W&C’s London bank finance group, leave for Latham, increasing Latham’s London-based finance practice to 20 lawyers. White & Case has lost a number of high-profile partners from its London office in recent years.

A New York jury decided Friday in favor of U.S. and European shareholders who said the Paris-based Vivendi media group lied to the public about its shaky finances. Plaintiffs said the potential payout to investors could total $9.3 billion. A lawyer for Vivendi said it was impossible to estimate actual damages or even the class size yet, but a shareholders’ attorney said he believed the award was the largest securities class action jury verdict in history.

Can you tell us if you missed anything important while you were napping? That’s an easy question minutes after you wake up. But few people could remember their state of mind after a nap two-and-a-half years earlier, and that’s a point that figures in a case the New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear. A man who was found guilty of robbery and assault in 2007 is appealing his conviction on grounds that juror No. 4 took a nap during the most crucial point in the defense: cross-examination of the victim.

Funk musician Sly Stone has sued his former manager for allegedly bilking him out of as much as $30 million in royalties during the past two decades. Stone filed suit in Los Angeles Co., Calif., Superior Court on Thursday alleging fraud by Jerry Goldstein and several of his associates and companies. According to the lawsuit, Goldstein forced Stone to sign a management contract at a time when the musician was “particularly vulnerable to duress and undue influence” due to drug addiction and other personal problems.

Now in beta and available for download, Microsoft Office 2010 comes with a number of enhancements to its suite, including an expansion of its Ribbon architecture, and the first ever web-based versions of its most popular applications. John K. Waters takes a walk through the new Office.

An entire industry has grown up around interpreting legal research needs and finding information for lawyers and their clients. Researchers have to remember where information resides and extract relevant documents in a compressed amount of time using Boolean syntax and other search strategies. LexisNexis’ Lexis for Microsoft and Thomson Reuters’ WestlawNext aim to make online research easy, and effective, through very different strategies that will make for an interesting show at LegalTech New York, Feb. 1-3.

Barclays’ lawyers at Boies Schiller & Flexner made a hefty filing Friday in an effort to convince a judge to dismiss a suit arguing Barclays got a $5 billion sweetheart deal when it purchased Lehman Brothers’ North American assets at the height of the financial crisis. The thousands of pages filed provide a fascinating glimpse into the chaos of September 2008.

For years now, judicial reform groups have more or less resigned themselves to the reality that the public likes to elect its state judges and will fight any effort to appoint them instead. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC may have altered that sober truth. By supersizing possible corporate domination of judicial elections, the thinking goes, the decision may finally make the public see how unseemly the elections are — and move toward merit-based selection as an alternative.